By Eliot Wilder / Todd Rundgren once seemed to have it all: if he wasn't exactly a true star, he was certainly a wizard in the studio. Not only that, but from saxophone to synthesizer, he could play just about any instrument, and his idiosyncratic style was unique and endearing. But it's been decades since he stopped cranking out three-minute pop ditties like "I Saw the Light," "Hello, It's Me" and "Can We Still Be Friends?," and when his group Utopia finally descended into Oblivion (a befitting title for their final release), Todd's career became increasingly insular and erratic, sliding into a not-completely-comfortable cult exile.

Recent years have seen the release of spotty CDs such as the embarrassingly vanilla rap of No World Order, the been-there-done-thatness of The Individualist, as well as With a Twist, a pointless elpee's worth of lounge-core remakes of some his better-known tunes, and One Long Year, a hodgepodge of tracks culled from his Web site releases. It looked as if Todd was toast, and even his most ardent fans (myself included), who had been willing to follow him through his various caprices and incarnations, had all but given up on the hope that the former Runt would get back to making something, anything worthwhile.

At this juncture, even if he were to release an album with songs and performances that demonstrate that he still gives a shit, would anyone besides a total diehard be interested? Well, that remains to be seen, but his new Liars is one committed record. "Most of my recent albums have been collections from recent and old recordings," Rundgren admits. "Liars is an album of all brand new material that I've been thinking about for about 10 years."

Apparently during that time, Todd was contemplating the slippery nature of truth - more specifically, lies and the lying liars who tell them. He says that it was the 2000 presidential election that "really made me see that we go through life thinking certain things are true, and then reality is thrust upon you and you realize you've been living a lie." And his reaction to those lies triggered his creative sense, because Liars is undoubtedly his most focused and coherent record since 1989's Nearly Human. Todd's never been one to shy away from big issues, and here he faces some of the biggest of them all - the nature of what is and, more importantly, what is not.

To be sure, he attacks the issue head on and in all earnestness; the very first track is called "Truth," on which he announces "I'm gonna find the truth / 'cause it ain't here." With "Sweet," he tells us "I've been living with a lie for so long now, baby / I gotta set my soul free." On "Wondering," Todd seems to have consigned himself to near futility: "Once in a while something reminds you / then you forget about it." But on the title tune, which closes the album, he gets the bastards in the crosshairs: "And with every lying breath / you send them to their death."

But despite finding something he wants desperately to say, Todd is still drawing from the same musical bag of tricks that he has employed for the last 20 years. And it's here that Liars founders. Much in the way in which Prince has failed to catch up with the times (when will he stop using that dated Linn drum machine?), Todd still sounds hopelessly locked in the '80s. His synthetic soundscapes overwhelm the tracks, reducing their capacity to breathe. Rundgren has always gone for a dense production, but on Liars it's practically impenetrable. For one who was once so technologically adept, it's pitiable that he doesn't now recognize just how behind the curve he is. By cordoning himself off from the rest of the world, he seems no longer in touch with what's really going on out there. And it makes the shots he takes at the media, at the president and at the truth come across as curmudgeonly. On "Soul Brother," when he sings "It's a murky, jerky groove / it motivates but it don't move" against a programmed murky, jerky groove, it's not ironic. It's just sad.

And, unfortunately, that's the truth.

From Amplifier magazine